Electrostatics

Abstract

Electric charge has been known since the Greeks first rubbed amber and noticed that it then attracted small objects. Little further progress was made until the eighteenth century when du Fay showed that there were two sorts of charge. One sort followed the rubbing of an amber rod with wool, the other a glass rod with silk. It was Benjamin Franklin who arbitrarily named the latter a positive charge and the original amber one a negative charge. He also showed that the total charge in a rubbing experiment was constant.